News & Events

Penn State Arts Laureate to give reading at college

Penn State's 2010 Arts Laureate Robin Becker will read from her work at Penn State Berks on Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in the Perkins Student Center Multipurpose Room. This event is free and open to the public.

Becker, Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State's University Park campus, will lead a discussion exploring how and why poems move us through readings from her books. Three of her volumes are available in the campus Bookstore: All-American Girl, The Horse Fair, and Domain of Perfect Affection.

Additionally, she will be visiting a Creative Writing class on campus to meet with students earlier in the day and has made copies of her most recent book, Domain of Perfect Affection, available free to the students in the class. The book explores the conditions under which people experience and resist pleasure, according to University of Pittsburgh Press, which published the collection in 2006.

A Penn State University faculty member since 1994, Becker has published seven books of poetry and has been a highly sought contributor, judge, reviewer, and critic in the field of poetry for nearly two decades. Her prose and poetry appear widely in journals including the American Poetry Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, the Georgia Review and Poetry. In 2000, Becker won Penn State's George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Becker is the third Penn State laureate, succeeding Anthony T. Leach, associate professor of music and music education, and inaugural laureate Kim Cook, professor of music in cello, both in Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture. The Penn State laureate is a full-time University faculty member in the humanities or fine arts who is assigned half-time for one academic year to bring an enhanced level of social, cultural, artistic, and human perspective and awareness to a broad array of audiences. The laureate will be a highly visible representative of Penn State who will appear regularly at events University-wide and throughout the Commonwealth at community and statewide events.

For more information, contact Jayne Brown, Senior Lecturer in English, at 610-396-6041 or via e-mail at jrb30@psu.edu.

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